Seòmar agus comataidhean

The Scottish Government, along with the other UK administrations, is carefully considering proposals to reduce the environmental impacts of e-cigarettes as part of the consultation on reforms to the WEEE regulations which will be published later this year.

This information is publicly available and published online. I refer the member to the following websites: Creative-Communities-Funded-Orgs-by-Local-Authority-for-webpage-1.pdf (inspiringscotland.org.uk)

Creative-Communities-Programme-2021-22.pdf (inspiringscotland.org.uk)

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-19744 on‎ 17 July 2023. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

The Scottish Government is providing support to primary care services in their implementation of Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) Standard 7 through three routes:

The first is through our ringfencing £30m as set out in our Cross Government Plan, over the course of 3 years, from the Scottish Government’s Enhanced Services Allocation to NHS territorial Boards, from April 2023, in order to accelerate the adoption of Enhanced Services for drug services across Scotland. Local areas will be asked to prioritise use of this funding to improve outcomes for people who use drugs.

The second is through our commissioning Public Health Scotland to consider and develop a reference suite of best practice models that should provide local areas with guidance on how they might adapt primary care delivery to integrate drugs services in a way that suits local needs. The material will be derived from a critical examination of international and domestic experience of drug service provision in primary care settings, including through direct consultation with delivery partners on the ground and with our Drugs Policy Clinical Advisory Group, providing insight into a breadth of applicable scenarios and solutions.

The third is through targeted support and intervention from Public Health Scotland’s MAT Implementation Support Team (MIST), who work closely with local areas to evaluate and progress implementation across the range of MAT Standards 1-10.

The Scottish Government has not fully assessed the level of awareness of MAT standard 7 among healthcare professionals working in primary care settings. Local services are being supported to implement the MAT standards by the MAT Implementation Support Team (MIST) which includes healthcare professionals with experience in primary care.

The National Mission benefits from the expertise of a Clinical Advisory Group of healthcare professionals and the implementation of the standards is also supported by NHS Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) which has primary care professionals on its MAT team.

Given the involvement of this support for implementing the standards and through their ongoing engagement with services all healthcare professionals working in primary care settings that have contractual arrangements in place to provide medication assisted treatment should be aware of MAT standard 7.

In January 2023, in the Cross-Government Plan published by the Scottish Government included a commitment to ring-fence £30 million of the funding available to General Practice to encourage more primary care providers to take on Enhance Service provision to support people impacted by drugs.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-19744 on‎ 17 July 2023. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

The timeline for MAT standard 7 ‘Primary Care’ has not been amended this year – it remains at full implementation to be completed by April 2025 as per the 2022 National Benchmarking report published by Public Health Scotland.

The MAT Implementation Support Team (MIST team) within Public Health Scotland provide support to local areas to engage with their primary care providers and will continue to do so.

The Local Partnership Forum North last met on 15 June to discuss a range of measures to enhance safety across the north of Scotland. Since then a range of additional targeted safety camera resources have been deployed at locations across the region, including the North Coast 500, to encourage good driver behaviour and enhanced levels of speed limit compliance.

Our Vision for Agriculture clearly states that we will deliver emission reductions in line with our climate targets. A new Agriculture Bill will be brought forward in 2023 to enable the delivery of the Vision and we will establish a robust and coherent framework to underpin Scotland's future agriculture support regime from 2025 onwards. That framework will deliver high quality food production, climate mitigation and adaptation, and nature restoration.

We recognise that the most recent emissions envelope was missed and we are already taking action. In June, we published the second edition of the Agricultural Reform Routemap and set out what changes recipients of current farm payments will be expected to make from 2025 and beyond. This includes protection for peatlands and wetlands, and linking beef cattle payments to calving intervals to improve efficiency. This is in advance to a new Enhanced payment being introduced in 2026 which will focus on funding targeted actions for reduce greenhouse gas emissions, adapt to climate change, and protect, restore and improve nature.

We have also committed to bring forward a draft of the next Climate Change Plan later this year which will set out our policies, proposals and updated emission envelopes for meeting our statutory targets for climate change, which will include agriculture’s contribution to reducing emissions.

Social Security Scotland works with individuals and supporting organisations to design services so that everyone who may be eligible for benefits understands how they can apply for and receive them.

Clients can apply in ways that suit them best either by paper or online application, by telephone or they can receive application support from our Local Delivery team who can arrange a face-to-face appointment in a client’s home, a community setting or video or phone call.

Social Security Scotland has processes in place to ensure telephone calls are answered, paper applications are processed and Local Delivery face to face appointments are made within reasonable timescales to ensure anyone applying for benefits or contacting Social Security Scotland is not disadvantaged, regardless of the method they choose to contact.